Book Image

Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey

By : Andrea Magni
4 (1)
Book Image

Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey

4 (1)
By: Andrea Magni

Overview of this book

FireMonkey (FMX) is a cross-platform application framework that allows developers to create exciting user interfaces and deliver applications on multiple operating systems (OS). This book will help you learn visual programming with Delphi and FMX. Starting with an overview of the FMX framework, including a general discussion of the underlying philosophy and approach, you’ll then move on to the fundamentals and architectural details of FMX. You’ll also cover a significant comparison between Delphi and the Visual Component Library (VCL). Next, you’ll focus on the main FMX components, data access/data binding, and style concepts, in addition to understanding how to deliver visually responsive UIs. To address modern application development, the book takes you through topics such as animations and effects, and provides you with a general introduction to parallel programming, specifically targeting UI-related aspects, including application responsiveness. Later, you’ll explore the most important cross-platform services in the FMX framework, which are essential for delivering your application on multiple platforms while retaining the single codebase approach. Finally, you’ll learn about FMX’s built-in 3D functionalities. By the end of this book, you’ll be familiar with the FMX framework and be able to build effective cross-platform apps.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Delphi GUI Programming Frameworks
4
Section 2: The FMX Framework in Depth
13
Section 3: Pushing to The Top: Advanced Topics

TBitmapListAnimation

Ever seen those sprites that were used to implement the first electronic games out there? TBitmapListAnimation will help you provide exactly the same functionality inside your applications. Think of a graphic animation as a sequence of frames to be displayed in a certain amount of time  that's the definition of what the TBitmapListAnimation component offers.

Once you or your graphic artists have a picture showing all the key frames beside each other, you just need to instruct TBitmapListAnimation to create a copy of this bitmap and specify the number of frames contained within (possibly arranged on multiple rows). After that, you are all set. Targeting a TBitmap property (that is, TRectangle.Fill.Bitmap.Bitmap) and starting the animation will result in a burst of frames being used to set the target bitmap.

The following image shows the bitmap that I prepared using a Delphi logo (the logo was rotated 30 degrees each frame...